Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

Welcome to the General Discussion area where just about anything goes! This area is designed to discuss all matters and does not necessarily have to be Transformers related. Please keep topics relevant.

"What," you ask, "are you doing coming to a Transformers forum and posting Star Trek stuff?"

Well... this is one of the few forums I'm already an active member of... and, the "General Discussion" section exists for a reason!

Anyway, one thing I like to do sometimes for fun is to make my own starship designs. I typically limit myself to TOS-movie era designs, as that is my favorite aesthetic.

Now, I didn't draw all of these things from scratch, mind you! I'm not that talented. But a nice thing about Federation starships is that it is easy enough to take different parts of pre-existing designs and cut & paste them together in new ways. And that is mostly what I've done, with a bit of drawing in new bits occasionally to tie everything all together.

When I was a kid, this would be done by taking books of schematics I had, and either using paper & pencil and tracing the parts I needed, or by photocopying and doing cut & paste in the most literal sense. These days, when I decided to try my hand at this old hobby again, I had digital tools at my fingertips.

My first design of the digital age. My take on a fairly standard Scout design...

...which was then easy enough to modify into a Destroyer design. This ship has one of those few parts that was designed by myself, when I made torpedo launchers that went directly under the bridge.

My most recent design, done last night. (But I'm putting them up in order of registry number, hence why it is appearing third in this post.) I may have gone a bit overboard with the windows on the dorsal, but I suppose it is a good ship to be on if you like to look outside.

Another earlier design. This time, I thought I'd see what it looked like if I made a really thick saucer. Then, since this ship obviously had a lot of internal volume, I decided to give it a designation as a "Colony Transport," i.e. a ship that takes settlers and supplies to new planets to set up new colonies.

Not my most radical design. Basically just the Enterprise with no torpedoes, less phasers, and different nacelle struts.

It is fun to take a Miranda-style (a.k.a. the Reliant) hull and extend it in different ways. You'll see this in a few of my other designs, as well. This is one of my few designs that feature elements wider then the primary hull, which means when the ship is in dock, the dock better have a nice long gangway to reach the main airlock!

For some reason, I quite liked the flat profile that this one ended up having from the front or side. Feeling that this might give the ship a bit of a tactical advantage (offering less of a target) I ended up designating it as a "Strike Cruiser."

When I was done with this one, I figured it basically looked like a cargo ship.

Another of my earlier designs. Basically, this was, "Let's take all of the most impressive looking bits (that I had at the time) and throw them together! Then name it after myself! Yeah!" In retrospect, I feel the design may be a bit overkill, and I've soured on it a bit. Some parts that are awesome separately might just not work quite as well when thrown together. Probably it would be better if it didn't have two different secondary hulls. Perhaps one of these days, I'll do a redesign and get rid of the upper secondary hull and replace it with a dorsal.

No profound comments on this one. It is a starship. Enjoy irresponsibly.

A more recent Destroyer design I did, giving me another chance to use the under-bridge torpedo launcher I designed. Because of where I placed the warp engines on this one I had to move the main airlock to the front edge of the saucer, meaning that this ship must have an interesting time maneuvering itself into a dock. I named this one after my girlfriend, as "Rasampi" is one of the pseudonyms she uses online. (And since she shares a surname with a famous Starfleet captain, that gave this ship's class name a double meaning.)

Another design I'm not entirely sure about... At first glance, the above may seem another overkill design with too many elements thrown at it. However...

...I designed it as a ship that could separate into two separate pieces, each of which would in and of itself be a fully operational vessel. The forward section becomes a frigate similar in capability to a ship such as the Reliant, while the aft becomes a second ship that can act in a support function to the forward section. When separated, the shuttle bays on the upper hull of the "aft" ship become thru-deck bays for fast refueling and relaunch.

Like the Grissom in Star Trek III, this ship was named in honor of one of the astronauts lost on Apollo I. It also has similar warp nacelles as the Grissom, although I made them longer to fit on this ship's design.

My design philosophy with this one was basically, "the Reliant on steroids," with the rear portion of the hull thickened, a larger torpedo pod with twice as many launch tubes, and Excelsior-style warp nacelles.

The final design of mine that I am presenting in this post. I basically took my Usagi design, stretched the hull, and added four thru-deck shuttle bays to make a Shuttle Carrier design. I also added a few additional torpedo tubes on the front, and some under-slung mega-phaser canons, in order to allow for greater ability for firing arks on targets below the ship.

Bonus time! One time I was with my niece and nephew, I let them each design a ship. I had them pick pieces and tell me how to assemble them. My niece's came out quite nice, I think.

My nephew's... Well...

I tried to warn him, "If they fire torpedoes, they're going to shoot off their own bridge!" But that's how he wanted it, so that's how he got it.

Anyway, hope these designs are of some interest to people! I look forward to comments. Or better still, if people want to make their own designs and share them, awesome!

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

Most of these are really good! I love creating ships too. I don't have the resources. I used to draw my own ships. I'm interested in doing ships between 2293 and the next generation. I also interested in post NG ships. You know what bugs the hell out of me. Ships with no navigational deflector. How does that work Pretty sure I've seen your work on shipschematics.com.

SentinelA wrote:I love creating ships too. I don't have the resources. I used to draw my own ships. I'm interested in doing ships between 2293 and the next generation. I also interested in post NG ships.

Well, even if they're hand drawn, if you wish to share any of your designs, please do so!

As far as resources if you wanted to do something less hand drawn... Well, that's why I posted links to the resources I used, in case anyone wanted to have access to them! (Well, that and to give credit where credit was due.) And as for what program I used to assemble everything, it was nothing more fancy then Microsoft Paint.

(Quick note regarding those resources... I noticed the link I posted for the first one goes to a 404 error if clicked on, but if you copy the address and paste it into your address bar, it should work then.)

SentinelA wrote:You know what bugs the hell out of me. Ships with no navigational deflector. How does that work

I know! Tell me about it. The Scout and Destroyer that were the top two ones I posted were originally designed without deflectors, because I figured there wasn't much choice with a design that was only a saucer and warp nacelles. But when I saw some in-saucer deflectors in some of the toolkits included in Vance's Schematics, I was quick to revise those designs to have deflectors, and to make sure I included them in my other designs!

In the past, if I designed a ship that had a regular, "Enterprise"-style saucer, and no secondary hull, I just reluctantly went with the fact that there was no visible navigational deflector. But never again! Now all my designs will have them!

(My niece's ship doesn't have one... But hey, it was a ship designed by someone under a decade old! At least she's not blowing up her own bridge, unlike her older brother!)

In "Reliant"-style hulls, I've often seen this part labeled as the navigational deflector:

But even then, I included the in-saucer deflector on most (but not all) of the ships with that style hull. Nothing wrong with having some redundancies, eh? Otherwise, you're kind of stuck going at relatively slow (sub-warp) speeds if your only navigational deflector breaks down!

SentinelA wrote:Pretty sure I've seen your work on shipschematics.com.

Nope. This thread was the first place I've ever shared my designs online. But it wouldn't surprise me if there are similar designs out there.

SentinelA wrote:I imagine like me you collect ships.

Not as much as I might like. Most of my toy-collecting resources are allocated to Transformers. But I do have a Diamond Select Refit Enterprise, and a few smaller items such as a few Hallmark ornaments.

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

MightyMagnus78 wrote:This is really nice work. I've always loved the 'Star Trek' aesthetic and the Sakura in particular is a beautiful looking ship.

Thank you!

As my newest design, the Sakura definitely has the benefit of being built upon the experience of what I'd done previously.

I've had some fun with that 5/8ths saucer I found in Vance's Schematics, which I modified by adding the portion behind the bridge that contains the impulse engines. (Also, the original design lacked the lower dome, having a flat bottom under the saucer as you can see on my Soyokaze design.) In all, I quite like how the three ships (The aforementioned Sakura and Soyokaze, plus the Chaffee) I've made thus far with this hull design have turned out.

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

What the heck, I made another one. I took a tiny primary hull and a stubby secondary hull and decided to put them together in a configuration similar to a Constitution Class ship.

The result ended up looking like a cute, stubby version of the Enterprise. And so I designated it as a Light Cruiser, as opposed to the Constitution Class being a Heavy Cruiser.

The front view on this one was a pain, as after checking all of my pre-existing sources looking for warp nacelle support pylons that were the right angle and coming up dry, I ended up having to draw them up from scratch.

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

After the Colbert, which while it did take some work wasn't an end product that looked terribly revolutionary, I thought I'd make another (even) smaller ship, and a more radical design. In fact, the hull design I wanted to work with here took a lot of work, as it was only available as an Original Series design, which it took a lot of creative copy & pasting, and some decent re-drawing to smooth out the details, to convert it to a movie-era design. In fact, in this case I think I shall share a before and after:

And the finished ship design:

She's a tiny ship, but has a bite.

SentinelA wrote:You know what bugs the hell out of me. Ships with no navigational deflector.

Just when I was about to call this ship finished, I realized, "Oh crap, it needs a deflector!" It was a **** fitting it in, but I'm glad I did so.

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

Think I'll take a break from doing new designs for now. (I tend to do them in spurts, and then go on a long break between.) But I still would love (and would respond to) any further comments, and would also love to see some designs from others if anyone else makes starship designs.

But for now, I'll leave you with these:

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

SentinelA wrote:Wondering if you'd consider doing some computer drawing for me? I have some kitbashed ships I'd like schematics for. One would be an Enterprise -B without a neck.

I have more but I'll wait for your response.

Hmm... Not sure if I'd be good at that sort of thing. I don't really draw completely from scratch with these. It really is a lot of cut & paste. Also, other then the warp nacelles (as used on the Usagi and the Coulson) I don't have a lot in the way of Excelsior Class parts.

Of course, Excelsior Class schematics shouldn't be too hard to find. Although you specifically mentioned the Enterprise-B, so I would imagine you'd want those funny extensions on the front of the secondary hull that they added so that they could blow a whole in the hull without damaging the actual model?

I suppose a neckless Excelsior Class ship wouldn't be the most difficult schematic modification to make, if I had the schematics in question. Have you ever thought of doing it yourself? Everything I've done has been just by taking existing schematics and/or ship parts toolkits, and cutting & pasting things together in Microsoft Paint. Hardly the most advanced graphic design program out there. If you want to take a crack at it yourself (and at some of the other ideas you've hinted at) I'd love to see the results! If you don't want to do it yourself... Maybe I'll take a crack at it, next time I am hit with the ship-designing bug. But there will be a bit of a wait, as the bug is out of my system for the moment.

... ... ...

...but it will return someday!

To change the subject for the moment... Anyone looking at the schematics of the Herodotus may notice I gave the ship's class name as Hermes Class Courier. I completely forgot that that class name was already taken, when Franz Joseph, grand-daddy of Star Trek blueprints, published his 1975 book, Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manuel, which included the Hermes Class Scout. So I came up with a new class name, the Pheidippides Class Courier. I do try to avoid conflict with pre-established designs, especially ones such as Mr. Joseph's that have been around for so long and are all but officially been accepted as canon. (Heck, they've been hinted at in-canon with some of the com chatter heard on Epsilon 9, and with some of the deck plans and schematics being seen on screens in Treks II and III... including the Hermes class!)

I haven't uploaded new pictures with the updated class name. I may someday. But for now, in case anyone saw these and said, "Hey, that's not a Hermes Class ship!" I just wanted to acknowledge that yes, I know, and yes, I've changed it.

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

sto_vo_kor_2000 wrote:very nice stuff, have you posted these elsewhere?

Thanks! And nope, just here. Maybe you saw similar designs elsewhere, though? I imagine there is bound to be similarities when staying within a specific design aesthetic.

But as stated, I've thus far only shared these here. I don't really have any Trek forums I post to, other then once in a great while (and not for ages) on the Phase II/New Voyages website.

Yotsuyasan wrote:Think I'll take a break from doing new designs for now.

Well, I suppose I lasted a week... That's not too bad!

Wanted to play around a bit with some hull designs.

A bit of a strange saucer shape here:

Not sure about it overall... Not that the saucer didn't come out okay, but it looks a little strange paired with that secondary hull, especially from the side view. But part of the reason I gave it a registry lower then the Enterprise* was to try and justify this by suggesting an older, and perhaps less elegant design. (Although obviously it has since refitted to movie-era tech.)

Next, I just thought I'd see what happened if I elongated some of the traditional shapes to make a wider ship:

It's big! It's heavily armed! (Even featuring port and starboard orientated torpedo tubes!) Two thru-deck shuttle bays! But with its size and shape, probably not the fastest or most maneuverable of ships. So I figured that this was a class that doesn't have a large number of ships in it, but those that there are are used as command ships for fleets.

Next, while contemplating my shrunken Constitution-style, the U.S.S. Colbert**, I thought I'd try to design a similar sized Reliant-style hull. After some work, I came up with this ship design:

Then the next step was just to make a shrunken Reliant:

I quite like this design!

Anyway... This time, I think I'm really done for a while!

* But not lower then all Constitution class ships, thanks to the special effects folk on The Original Series just using a store bought Enterprise model, and cutting up the decal sheet to end up with NCC-1017, when building a model for the Constellation.

** Quite bummed about the recent news... On one hand, I'm happy he has this opportunity, and it is bound to be good for him. But since it means the end of the Colbert Report, on a personal level it just leaves a half hour hole in my heart four nights a week at 11:30... Ah well, at least we still have Stewart!

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

Well, I had these designs sitting on my computer... I shared most of them here. (I say most, as despite my protestations of taking a break, I may have again made a few more...) I thought to myself, "You know what these ship designs are missing? Context. Maybe a bit of history."

And so I decided to give them some. I thought I'd make myself a new website. On that site, I'd make a page for each starship class, and write up a little info about each class.

As of this writing, I have six classes presented, or 1/4th of the designs I have thus far. As time goes on, I expect I'll get the rest up. And after that, I suppose I may design some more.

Any curious parties, I certainly invite you to come on by and have a look!

Huh... never exceeded my Photobucket bandwidth before. Kind of embarrassing, if anyone finds this thread new before a new month begins to reset the bandwidth limit, and then can't see anything! I suppose it makes a good case for visiting the new website I mentioned having made in my last post, as that doesn't rely upon Photobucket image hosting. (I don't have everything up on it yet, but I have been plugging away at it!)

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

And if anyone is interested, I've just posted the first starship design to the new website that I hadn't previously shared here, the U.S.S. Honeycutt, a Pierce Class Hospital Ship.

Here's some pics:

And if you visit the page on the website, you can read a brief history of the class, as well as a list of the other ships in the class. (And, of course, you can read similar things for the other ship classes included on the website.)

Last edited by Yotsuyasan on Fri May 09, 2014 9:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

Well, I finished adding to the new website I built all of the designs I currently have. The building of this site was inspired by some of the positive feedback I'd gotten on my starships in this thread, so I'd definitely be curious to hear thoughts on the website as a whole, the few ship designs that hadn't previously been shared here, and the histories written to accompany all of the ships.

Boy Scouts ½: The adventures of five members of Boy ScoutTroop 192 who, after a trip to China, have lives full of change...

Also, if anyone is interested, for ships with registry numbers below NCC-2000, I've been designing pre-refit versions. For example, one person previously remarked upon liking the design of U.S.S. Sakura, which looks like this:

Well, once upon a time, she looked like this:

Don't have all of the pre-refit versions designed yet, but it is an ongoing process that I suspect shan't take much longer.

Anyway, that's about all for now, I suppose. I mainly wanted to note the new URL just in case anyone needed it. I probably shan't be posting any new designs to this thread going forward, as they will just be on my website. But I will still reply if anyone (a) posts their own designs, (b) comments on one of my designs, and/or (c) comments on my website.